At the SHEA Spring Conference 2024 in Houston, attendees enjoyed some sun, excellent food and an array of research on prevention and antimicrobial stewardship. The following is a summary of selected COVID-19–related abstracts. Registered attendees can review the full program on the SHEA Spring Conference 2024 website.
Association Between Hospital-Onset SARS-CoV-2 and Ending Universal Admission Testing and Masking at Five U.S. Hospitals
Dr. Theodore Pak of Harvard Medical School gave an oral abstract about the risk of hospital-onset COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses after universal masking and universal admission testing ended at 10 U.S. hospitals (two academic referral centers, seven community hospitals and one specialty hospital). The Harvard-based team used an interrupted time series analysis to look at (1) outcomes of the rate of new hospital-onset COVID-19 cases per new community-onset COVID-19 cases and (2) the rate of new hospital-onset respiratory viruses per new community-onset respiratory viruses. Respiratory viruses in this case included adenovirus, COVID-19, influenza, metapneumovirus, parainfluenza and RSV. They found an immediate change in levels — almost a doubling of cases for both hospital-onset COVID-19 and all respiratory viruses after the end of universal admission testing and universal masking. Considering the findings, the team cautioned that this study was in one U.S. region (Northeast) and that there were no concurrent controls.
Note: This issue of universal masking in health care settings has also been discussed previously on the Real-Time Learning Network.
Burden of Health Care-Associated Infections in a Pediatric Intensive Care Setting Before, During and After the Pandemic
Engbretson et al. from the Infection Prevention Program at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada, presented data on health care-associated infection rates pre-pandemic (January 2019-February 2020), during the pandemic (March 2020-February 2022) and post-pandemic (March 2022-November 2023). Like many other U.S. and international studies, they found that overall, the rate of HAIs in their unit increased during the pandemic (Evans, April 2022; Baker, May 2022; Lastinger, May 2022). Their study looked at 2,959 pediatric intensive care unit patients with 60 HAIs. The burden of infection for their unit was primarily (80%) catheter-associated urinary tract infections and health care-associated viral respiratory infections. Knowing that these were the two top HAIs in their unit, they concluded focusing infection prevention efforts on these two specific HAIs may yield better outcomes.
Registered attendees can review the full program on the SHEA Spring Conference 2024 website.